Barbed Wire and Cherry Blossoms (9 page)

Hiroshi frowns.

‘Oh, children, goothas means children. I had to stay with them and couldn't come down last night. You must be starving.'

Hiroshi unwraps the damper and eats it instantly. The water disappears quickly too.

‘I'm sorry Jessie was sick. What was wrong?'

‘She had poisoning. She ate some nuts off a pine tree and you're not supposed to eat them. She had to stay in the hospital, which is never a good experience for Aboriginal people. Mum said they made her wait in the cupboard with all the linen – the sheets and blankets.'

‘That doesn't sound right.'

‘It gets worse,' Mary says. ‘At the Cowra hospital there's a ward out the back for the Black people, that's where they put the Aboriginal women if they come in to have babies. My Aunt said that when she was there it had the word “ABO” written in capital letters on the sheets and the towels. It's so they don't accidentally give them to white people to use.'

‘No!' Hiroshi exclaims in disbelief. ‘This is how Australians treat other Australians?'

Mary gets the newspaper out of her waistband. ‘I nearly forgot, here's the paper.'

Hiroshi takes it, eyes wide, always grateful. He flicks through it quickly while Mary is still there and stops.

‘What is this?' Hiroshi asks Mary, pointing to the headline C
OWRA V.
C
ANOWINDRA
.

‘Oh, that's a story about football,' she says. ‘It talks about my dad's cousin Doug Williams.'

Hiroshi starts reading, ‘“He chased down an opposition player, bringing him down in a flying tackle.”'

‘Yes, that means he ran after the man with the ball and grabbed him, pushing him to the ground. That's a tackle.' Mary moves like she is going to tackle an invisible footballer. Hiroshi chuckles at the dramatics.

‘The Black Diamonds are from here, Erambie,' she says proudly. ‘They're legends across the region. Everyone knows about Dicky McGuinness, Viney Murray, Archie Bamblett, Harold Carberry and Doug Williams. They're our local heroes, and we're all related in some way, either by blood or by marriage, and always by this land around here.'

Hiroshi just nods, still trying to understand how everyone can be related. He thinks Mary has a very big family.

‘Here in Cowra, football – footy – is very popular.' Mary loves her football as much as the others at Erambie. It's a time when all the community can have some fun, although the men are very competitive and sometimes the women too, and on occasion there's fisticuffs, as her dad calls it. ‘We don't have much money here, but one ball can keep us entertained for hours.'

‘Football,' Hiroshi says the word for the first time.

‘Footy.'

‘Footy. I like the sound of football,' Hiroshi says, then corrects himself, ‘Footy.'

They both grin widely.

Mary wants to tell Hiroshi more about the Erambie Allblacks, who played their last game in 1940, and that it's the new players that are known as the Black Diamonds. But she doesn't have time to go into the history of football and simply says, ‘I'll see you tomorrow.'

‘Ashita mata,' Hiroshi replies. ‘See you tomorrow.'

‘There's the bell,' Joan sings out to her children two days later. ‘School's on!'

The kids all stagger out of their bedroom, whining about having to go to school. It's only across the mission but the Williams kids drag their feet every time. The kitchen is warm and the air smells sweet and that's where they'd rather stay.

‘Here's some porridge, eat it quickly and then be off,' Joan says.

Mary hopes her mother has managed to pick the weevils out of the oats. She tries her best but sometimes she doesn't have enough time and the goothas start up about it. This morning they are too concerned about having to go to school, which isn't an everyday occurrence.

‘I like the days when Mr Smith is too busy for school,' Dottie says.

‘Me too, the days when the bell
doesn't
ring are the best!' Jessie agrees, having fully recovered from her hospital visit.

‘Just finish your breakfast and go,' Joan says, trying to get around with James stuck to her leg. ‘And be polite!' she instructs. Joan doesn't have much faith in the mission school, it's hit and miss and she believes it's second-rate teaching. ‘The government must think it's good enough for the Black kids,' she's been known to say when the kids are at home for days on end.

‘It's a waste of time, we don't learn anything. Mary would be a better teacher than Mr Smith or his wife,' Betty grumbles as she ushers her younger sisters out the door. She isn't a fan of the school and some days when she goes home for lunch, she convinces her mother to let her stay home and help clean.

Mary crosses the mission to the Manager's house. It's a blue-sky day but the cold wind stings her face; she had some porridge but it wasn't enough to warm her properly. She sees a magpie and stops in her tracks. She recalls the saying that Uncle Kevin has taught her, has taught them all: One for sorrow, two for joy, three for girls, four for boys, five for silver, six for gold, seven for stories that have never been told.

She knows she has to see another magpie quickly so that there is joy, not sorrow. She spends the whole day looking out the window as often as she can to see a second magpie, hoping there won't be any bad news about Hiroshi being found, or anyone she knows getting sick, or worse, dying.

As she finishes washing the dishes that night there is a knock on the Smiths' door. It's a young Murray fella, her
second cousin about the same age as Betty, who is usually very quiet. He's been crying and is breathing heavily when Mr Smith opens the door.

‘What is it then?' Smith says coldly, not acknowledging the lad's distress.

‘My mum had a baby,' the boy sobs, ‘but it died.' And he pushes himself into the belly of the Manager for comfort.

Mary drops the metal bowl she's drying. ‘One for sorrow,' she says out loud. She knows she will be the one to break the news to her parents when she goes home.

Smith puts one hand on the boy's shoulder momentarily and then steps back.

The next day the community is in mourning. A stillbirth is something difficult for people to fathom, but there is no decent medical help for pregnant women at Erambie. Many of them don't go to the hospital to give birth, and most babies are born in the huts. There is a funeral at the Baptist church on the mission and everyone is solemn, even the kids who are usually boisterous and noisy are behaving themselves. Joan hasn't stopped crying since Mary broke the news.

‘We had a funeral today, a little baby girl, who never got to breathe at all. She was born dead,' Mary tells Hiroshi when she goes to see him. A single tear drops from her eye.

‘In the hospital?' Hiroshi asks. ‘Was it the hospital's fault, because they don't treat your family properly?'

‘No, we really only go to the hospital if it's an emergency, like when Jessie was poisoned,' Mary says softly. ‘It is so very sad, but I knew something bad was going to happen. We have ways of knowing things will happen. We have messengers,
animals. There is a small bird called a willy wagtail, it's black with a white belly. They usually have white eyebrows and little white whiskers too. It always wags its tail, that's where it got its name from. We believe if you see one of these willy wagtails, if it comes and sits on the fence, for example, then it usually brings bad news. That we will get bad news.'

‘And did you see this bird?' Hiroshi asked.

‘No, I saw another bird, it's called a magpie, and it has a lot of meanings. It can bring different messages. There is a saying: One for sorrow, two for joy, three for girls, four for boys, five for silver, six for gold, seven for stories that have never been told.' Mary breaks down, sobbing.

Hiroshi doesn't quite know what to do. It has been a long time since he saw a woman cry, not since he said goodbye to Benika, and that was completely different. He could comfort Benika, put his arms around her. He cannot do this with Mary. He stands awkwardly, waiting for her tears to stop. When they do, he talks about the magpies back in Japan.

‘In my country we have a story about magpies as well. It is related to the Star Festival, the Tanabata, and it celebrates the meeting of two stars. It is the story of the Weaver Girl and the Cow Herder. There is a weaving princess, she is the daughter of the sky, and her name is Orihime. She weaves beautiful clothes, she worked very hard to weave and her father loved her work. But then she was sad because she worked so hard and never had time to meet anyone, so her father arranged for her to meet a cow herder by the name of Hikobishi, who lived on the other side of the Amanogawa River from her. They fell in love instantly and married quickly.

‘But Orihime stopped weaving and Hikobishi let his cows roam all over, so the weaving princess's father separated them back to opposite sides of the river. Orihime cried so much her father said that if she worked hard enough he would let the two meet on the seventh day of the seventh month. But there was no bridge to cross for them to meet. This is where the magpies come into it. A flock of magpies knew that Orihime kept crying so they decided to use their wings to make a bridge across the river, and then she could cross and be with her love. Legend has it that if the weather is bad on Tanabata, if there is too much rain, then the magpies won't come and the two lovers must wait for another year to see each other.'

Mary is crying again by the end of the story. ‘That is really beautiful,' she says. She cannot believe that a man who has been to war, who has been a prisoner in the camp in Cowra, who is living in the dark under the ground, is also capable of telling such a beautiful story. Mary loves Hiroshi's magpie story. She imagines she and Hiroshi are like two magpies connecting worlds and wishes she could sit and listen to his stories all night. Mary knows Hiroshi has been through so many terrible things and yet he knew just what to say to make her feel better.

When Mary walks back into the hut she has made sure her face is not flushed from seeing Hiroshi and listening to the story he told. The ladies are all there playing cards. One way
to deal with grief is to sit together with cups of tea and play cards. Cooncan is the most common game played. Marj is known as a hustler, Ivy is the cautious one and Joan is the peacemaker when there is conflict. There are often about six women around the table and on those nights the men are outside, preferring to leave the women to themselves.

The mission kids love it when all the Aunties get together and play cards, as they gossip and talk about who's kissing who and tell stories and laugh really loud. Aunty Marj has the biggest laugh because she has the biggest belly, or so Kevin says, and the kids agree.

‘Now, you know I'm not one to gossip,' Marj says in her butter-wouldn't-melt-in-her-mouth tone. ‘And you know I love Banjo like my own brother,' she adds to Joan. ‘But, someone in town told someone else who told Rosie down at Ryan's who told me just this morning, that Banjo was defending the Japanese to whitefellas at work.'

‘Don't be silly,' Joan says, glancing at Mary. ‘Banjo doesn't even know any Japanese. Why would he be defending them?' She looks at her cards but Mary can tell her mother isn't focused on the game at all.

‘Should I put the kettle on, Aunty Marj?' she interrupts.

‘Yes, thank you, my girl,' Marj answers, still staring at Joan. ‘Now, I'm not saying that this is true, or that this is right or wrong, Joan, no, I'm not. Far be it from me to offer judgement on anyone, Black, white or brindle – or yellow, in the case of the Japs – but I did feel it was my role as a good friend and neighbour to you and Banjo, and because, well, we don't keep anything from each other ever, now, do we? So I thought that
I should tell you what
someone
was saying about your husband. Because you know, it reflects on all of us, being friends and relatives. Not that I care one bit about gossip or what other people think or say, as you'd both know, because people who gossip have nothing better to do with their time, as we know, and . . .'